The Shah, at least fought before he left, and He should have stayed on, sending the Crown Prince to safety...He'd have died most likely (though if he'd determined to stay, he might have let the forces loyal to him use the means needed to win), but that comes to everyone anyway.

William III wouldn't have been willing to make him a Martyr (as was King Charles I), and if he had, James III would have had the throne, as did Charles II!

An English Born, English reared (under perhaps the regency of his Sister(s) James III) would have been preferred to the Hanoverian Option.

You're right, Ethiomonarchist, but there is a reason why we argue that way. People think James was still King once he left, and he wasn't, not once the legal processes had been gone through. One accepts the sovereignty of the Iranian, Greek and Romanian republics while regretting what happened and wishing that their monarchies, which in every case were so much better for them, would be restored. But no one here argues about that. People do argue, and it is allowed since it is historical, that James remained legitimate King after 1688. He did not, we were done with him for cause, he was gone. He had been our King but now was not. People do still debate whether that was right, which is fair enough that they should argue, how could he have been lawful King and then not be? Because he was unbearable and intolerable, and I suppose we tend to stress as part of our argument that he didn't even try in any real sense to keep his throne, just preserve himself. He had an attempt later in Ireland, yes, but was pathetic.

The warming-pan stories were such obvious nonsense that they would have posed no problem to the eventual succession of James III and VIII. Lots of stories like that have been told about other people who did succeed eventually to rule, a small number of the stories probably true. They succeeded nonetheless.

The warming-pan stories were such obvious nonsense that they would have posed no problem to the eventual succession of James III and VIII. Lots of stories like that have been told about other people who did succeed eventually to rule, a small number of the stories probably true. They succeeded nonetheless.

Yes a similar tale was told when the Duchesse de Berry gave birth to the Duc de Bordeaux (later known as the Comte de Chambourd) many months after the assasination of her husband. There had been no children born into the elder line of the Bourbon family since the birth of the last child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Now with the heir to Charles X, the Duke of Angouleme having no children, and the younger son murdered, all hopes had been on his pregnant widow producing a son to carry on the dynasty and prevent the Orleans princes from inheriting. The fact that the Duchesse produced a healthy son and that her delivery was not attended by hordes of courtiers as in the past led to whispers that the child had actually been a girl who was switched at birth, or that there had been no pregnancy and that a foundling had been secretly brought into the Duchesse de Berry's rooms.

__________________The Lion of Judah hath prevailed.

Ethiopia stretches her hands unto God (Quote from Psalm 68 which served as the Imperial Motto of the Ethiopian Empire)

"God and history shall remember your judgment." (Quote from Emperor Haile Selassie I's speech to the League of Nations to plead for assistance against the Italian Invasion, 1936.)

Well, obviously I know all about that. Some of the details are rather disgusting so I won't go into it. Let's just say that while there is room for doubt I don't have any, Henri V aka the Duc de Bordeaux aka the Comte de Chambord was the true son of the Duchesse de Berry.

It didn't matter in any case, since he had no children. Charles VII of France probably was not the son of Charles VI, he being repudiated by, unusually, both parents being a clue to that. He succeeded in any case and again it didn't matter. The only surviving descents from him are through female lines, so the French crown was not transmitted through him further than his son Louis XI.

ETA following Windemere's post below: make that his grandson Charles VIII, careless of me. The male line from Charles VII expired with him, and the crown went to a distant cousin, Louis XII.

On another tangent... there seems to be serious question whether the person buried in his tomb is actually Edward VI. There seems to be some serious thought that the poor young King was buried somewhere in Windsor Park, and that the Royal Council, eager to proclaim Lady Jane Grey and prevent the succession of Mary I. Needing time to arrange everything, they had kept the death of the King secret for some days, had buried the putrifying body quickly and substituted it with the remains of a similarly built boy which was in better condition and could last longer until they could get things in place for Lady Jane to be proclaimed and the sisters Mary and Elizabeth Tudor nutralized. What do you think of this story?

__________________The Lion of Judah hath prevailed.

Ethiopia stretches her hands unto God (Quote from Psalm 68 which served as the Imperial Motto of the Ethiopian Empire)

"God and history shall remember your judgment." (Quote from Emperor Haile Selassie I's speech to the League of Nations to plead for assistance against the Italian Invasion, 1936.)

I think it's utter rubbish. He was the King. People knew what he looked like. In particular, they knew that in his last days he looked extremely ill, in fact grotesque. How is some similarly-built lad with similar hair colour, presumably perfectly healthy until he was strangled or whatever, supposed to have been passed off for him? Apart from the moral turpitude that this poor child would have had to be abducted and murdered for the purpose, not an accusation to be lightly made. I made these points in person to Alison Weir, who was the latest person to propound this theory and whom I greatly respect but strongly disagree with over this. She didn't really have an answer.

Originally Posted by Ann McKechinI am grateful to the honourable gentleman for providing me with a little advance notice of his supplementary question. It gave me an opportunity to look at the reign of Richard II. He crushed the Peasants' Revolt, built up a group of unpopular favourites, arrested, imprisoned and executed the people he worked with, or banished them and confiscated their estates. It sounds a little like a Conservative Party selection meeting.

Ann McKechin is a disgusting excuse for a minister or whatever the loathsome swine is. But then, they're Labour, so I suppose I shouldn't be too optimistic.

__________________"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Well she wasn't off the mark about Richard II at least. As far as her statement about the Conservative Party selection meeting, she was probably making an attempt at being funny, but obviously failed. Her statement is dumb, but so patently rediculous that it shouldn't be taken seriosly. Perhaps you're being a wee bit harsh in calling her "disgusting" and a "loathsome swine"?

__________________The Lion of Judah hath prevailed.

Ethiopia stretches her hands unto God (Quote from Psalm 68 which served as the Imperial Motto of the Ethiopian Empire)

"God and history shall remember your judgment." (Quote from Emperor Haile Selassie I's speech to the League of Nations to plead for assistance against the Italian Invasion, 1936.)

Richard II was certainly a very poor King, and his deposition justified for his tyrannical and murderous rule. There is absolutely no doubt that he never escaped the perpetual imprisonment to which he had been sentenced by Parliament (many had wanted him put to death for his crimes, but Henry IV forbade this to even be considered). There is no doubt because his body was publicly exhibited in London for several days with the face uncovered, precisely to avoid these kinds of doubts. Not that it stopped stories such as this Scotland one, given little credence at the time and less since, but it at least kept them down.

How he died is another question. The official account was that he starved himself to death, which is possible, he had attempted to do this when first captured. The scurrilous story circulated by enemies of Henry IV was that Richard died by violence, specifically blows to the head, which his skeleton shows no trace of whatsoever. Most probably, though the evidence is rather complicated, the official story is half-true; he did starve to death but not by choice. Why Henry IV would have reversed his magnanimity towards the former King may be explained by the uncovering of a plot, known as the Epiphany Rising, to murder Henry and his four young sons in order to restore Richard. Which probably would not have happened even if the murders had succeeded, so hated had Richard made himself, but it can well be imagined that the plot sufficed to change Henry's mind.

The lineages of King Louis XI and King Charles VIII eventually became extinct. However, the descendants of King Charles VII, whatever their genetic heritage may have been, eventually returned to the French throne, albeit through the female line. Charles VII's daughter Magdalena of Valois was an ancestress of the monarchs of Navarre, and King Henri IV, the first Bourbon King of France, was one of her descendants.

__________________Dis Aliter Visum "Beware of martyrs and those who would die for their beliefs; for they frequently make many others die with them, often before them, sometimes instead of them."

Yes, though I carelessly left out Charles VIII from the post to which you reply, I did acknowledge that Charles VII had female-line descendants. I didn't specifically mention that Henri IV was among them but I did know it. I did a little project once* on which Kings of France were descended from all previous Kings that left known descent. Henri IV was not among them, as he lacked Louis XII, François I and Henri II, but he did have Charles VII whom they lacked. Louis XV was able to claim this, both his mother and paternal grandmother filling in the missing monarchs, and so were subsequent Kings up to and including Henri V**. The subsequent Orléans claimants could not, as they were missing Charles X, and others to begin with though they have been filled in since. However the next claimant will, whether that is considered to be the Comte de Clermont or the Duc de Vendôme, as they through their mother again have the full set.

*Posts 53-4 and 56 here, not under my name as in the interim I quit and rejoined.

**Arguably not including Louis XVIII, Charles X and the titular Louis XIX, as they were all survived by a daughter of Louis XVI, though she had no children herself.

I'm re-reading The Fears of Henry IV, Ian Mortimer's biography of that king, having looked up the arguments concerning Richard II's death for the reply above in it and deciding I'd like to refresh my memory altogether. An interesting passage I've just come across quotes the words of Thomas Arundel, then Bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury, to Richard in 1386. Richard was just 19 and had 13 years to go on the throne, yet he was in the throes of by no means his first confrontation with Parliament. In fact the King had stormed out, expecting Parliament to either consider itself dissolved or plead with him to return. Instead a deputation of knights was formed to deliver Parliament's demands to the King, which boiled down to some kind of reasonable governance, observance of the law of the land, some measure of justice and prudence in his dealings, and more willingness at his young age to listen to experienced advisers.

But it was learned that the King had assembled a force to waylay the knights and prevent delivery of the petition. So the bishop. an aristocrat and royal kinsman, and the King's uncle the Duke of Gloucester represented Parliament instead, it being thought Richard would not dare to attack them (he did not at that time, though later he had Gloucester murdered). An excerpt from Ely's address, which shows just what was thought of Richard even at that stage of his reign:

"We have an ancient law, which not long since lamentably had to be invoked [a reference to the deposition of Edward II], which provides that if the king upon some evil counsel, or from wilfulness or from contempt, or moved by his violent will, or in any other improper way, estrange himself from his people and will not be guided and governed by the laws of the land, and its enactments and laudable obervances... but wrong-headedly, upon his own conclusions, follows the promptings of his untempered will, then it would be lawful with the common consent and agreement of the people of the realm to put down the king from his royal seat, and raise another of the royal lineage in his place."

Seems to relate not only to Richard II but also to the other deposed King discussed in this thread. It is of course also the kind of thing the supporters of the American Revolution (see, I do know what thread I'm on!) used to justify their revolt against George III, but in that case with little justice in my opinion. Richard II though truly was an awful King, and no people were going to put up with him for ever. Ditto James II and VII, who of course did not last nearly as long.

That's ironic, as American emissaries attempted to convince the French population of Canada to join the revolt against the British government. The French, possibly feeling that their culture, language, and religion would be better preserved under the British colonial government, didn't respond. Ultimately, though, it was the French-Canadian birthrate that preserved their culture. In spite of heavy British immigration into Canada in the 1800s, the British colonial government was unable to absorb or assimilate the French population. (Possibly they tacitly encouraged the old-fashioned, conservative French-Canadian culture, preferring it to the newer, more radical, political ideas current in the thirteen original British/American colonies). Ultimately, most of the British immigrants to Canada settled in the new province of Ontario, giving it a heavily British character, while Quebec retained its French character.

__________________Dis Aliter Visum "Beware of martyrs and those who would die for their beliefs; for they frequently make many others die with them, often before them, sometimes instead of them."

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